Recession is going on for company itself.Reliance will give appropriate answer to Airtel very soon.
make no mistake of taking it as a recession thing for Airtel ...all telecom companies make huge profit ..thanks to one time establishment cost (which is very high offcourse ) but subsequent maintenance cost is very little ...for instance every sms from any network to another which u pay for 50 paise costs 3-4 paise to the company now a days ...and 1 rupee/per min call actually costs less than half of that to the companies ...so they are making huge profits ..mobile division is a cash cow for all network operators (thanks to prepaid system) ....
IF airtel is suffering ..it has largely to do with the mess airtel have themselves created, and shutting down services like unlimited internet through GPRS is a ploy to sell data cards ..which aren't selling at all ...as most of the schemes are kind of contract based ( like in places US,Europe) , buy a data card for 2000-3000/- and pay monthly some fixed amount...which indian consumers are not falling for...
If u were paying attention last 2-3 months Airtel has been dishing out some really "absurd" schemes ....this is just the beginning of airtel troubles ...i hope its not in mess like satyam ...